


Under the Green Sea

by miloowen



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Veterans, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2019-08-22 22:07:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16606343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miloowen/pseuds/miloowen
Summary: And then there was Mike, who did deliveries, whose mission was his own.  Pastor John’s mission was to feed the hungry, their bellies and their souls.  Mike’s mission was to feed the homeless vets he knew, the ones on the street corners, the ones in the woods, the ones standing at the front of the day labor place, waiting for a job, any job.  He fed them, and he found them clothes, and, if they let him, he’d find them a job and a place to stay.  But for Mike, a veteran of Vietnam, there was just something about that new guy, standing in the day labor parking lot, the one who said his name was Will Riker...





	1. Mike

**Author's Note:**

> Dulce et decorum est, Wilfred Owen
> 
> Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,  
> Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,  
> Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,  
> And towards our distant rest began to trudge.  
> Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,  
> But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;  
> Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots  
> Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
> 
> Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling  
> Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,  
> But someone still was yelling out and stumbling  
> And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—  
> Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,  
> As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
> 
> In all my dreams before my helpless sight,  
> He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
> 
> If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace  
> Behind the wagon that we flung him in,  
> And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,  
> His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;  
> If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood  
> Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,  
> Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud  
> Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—  
> My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  
> To children ardent for some desperate glory,  
> The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est  
> Pro patria mori.
> 
> On the 100th anniversary of Remembrance Day.

           The church Mike worked for wasn’t a big one.  They didn’t have the cops help with parking on Sundays and Wednesdays for church and Bible Studies.  They didn’t have a daycare, or a youth pastor, or a Sunday school.  They were just a typical Southern small town street church, made of stucco and tin, with folding chairs instead of pews.  They had a small parking lot and side of the street parking.  They had a pastor, and his wife, and a kitchen, and a mission.  Jesus fed the poor with bread and wine, but Mike’s church used soup, and day-old doughnuts donated by the Krispy Kreme, and bread from the discount bake shop.  The kitchen was open for breakfast and a dinner in the middle of the day, six days a week.  On Sundays, after service, they served brunch.  The small food bank they ran was open on Thursdays, between breakfast and dinner.

            And then there was Mike, who did deliveries, whose mission was his own.  Pastor John’s mission was to feed the hungry, their bellies and their souls.  Mike’s mission was to feed the homeless vets he knew, the ones on the street corners, the ones in the woods, the ones standing at the front of the day labor place, waiting for a job, any job.  He fed them, and he found them clothes, and, if they let him, he’d find them a job and a place to stay.

            The new guy was tall, broad-shouldered, with the military bearing he still carried with him and which was so hard to disguise, even with uncut hair and an unkempt beard.  He was standing in the day labor parking lot, a little ways off from the other men, some of whom were still hungover.  He looked strong, like he could do a decent day’s work, but he also had that weariness (sadness) about the eyes Mike recognized.  Mike knew he still carried the weight of that sadness himself, even though Vietnam had been over for almost forty years.

            He parked his truck, and a few of the regulars came over to help with the coffee and the boxes of doughnuts.  Then he made his rounds, asking how everyone was, checking if anyone needed boots, or a sleeping bag, or a belt to hold up sagging pants.

            He took a doughnut himself, because you always ate with your men. 

            “Who’s the new guy?” he asked Chaco.  Chaco was his age, but could still do a day’s work.  He’d been in Laos, and then in a hole.  “I ain’t seen him before.”

            Chaco slurped some of his coffee.  “Hot,” he said.  Then, “Dunno.  New today.”

            “Think he’s hungry?” Mike asked.

            “Shit, who ain’t?” Chaco said.

            Mike nodded, finished his coffee, and brushed the doughnut crumbs off his shirt.  It was only April, but already hot.  Still Mike didn’t wear anything but a long-sleeved shirt.  He didn’t want anyone to see his scars.

            The new guy acknowledged him with a cautious nod.  He’d been beaten about the face recently, Mike noted.  A blacked eye, fading.  A cut cheekbone.  Mike glanced at the man’s knuckles and saw they were still bruised.

            “There’s fresh coffee,” Mike said, “and doughnuts.  They ain’t real fresh, but they’re edible.”

            “What’s the catch?” the man asked.  He had a strong voice, low and pleasant; Mike wondered if he could sing.  The man nodded towards Mike’s truck, which had a sign that read “Church of Holiness, Pastor John Gindl, Worship Sundays 10 am” on the cab.

            “No catch,” Mike said, “not unless you want to get caught.”

            The man shrugged, slightly, and then gave a small smile.  “Fair enough,” he answered.  “Coffee would be good.”

            Mike brought him a cup and a doughnut, even though he hadn’t asked for one, and the man ate the doughnut quietly and sipped his coffee.

            “Thanks,” he said.

            Mike stuck out his hand, knowing he’d get sticky sugar icing on it.  “I’m Mike,” he said, “Mike Battaglia.”

            The man hesitated; Mike figured he was trying to come up with a new name.  He took Mike’s hand and said, “Will.  Will Riker.”

            “Good to meet ya, Will.”  Riker’s handshake was firm, but not crushing, and his hands were not calloused, not day-job calloused.  In for a penny, he thought.  “Iraq, or Afghanistan?”

            Riker hesitated again, and Mike wondered if he would lie.  Some vets did.  Dishonorable discharges, mostly; drugs, fighting.  It might fit Riker’s bruised face and knuckles.

            Riker didn’t answer.  He finished his coffee, and crushed the cup.  “I’m not looking for any trouble,” he said, his voice low.  “Just some honest work.”

            There was something, Mike knew.  The hands weren’t soft – they were working hands – but that work wasn’t digging holes or banging nails.  Riker easily stood four inches taller than he, and he was six feet.  “I’m guessing,” Mike said, “you were an officer, and you don’t want those guys to know.  Like maybe you’re afraid you won’t get work, because of how your resume reads.”

            Riker shrugged.  “Somalia.  One of the hellholes I was in.”

            “Navy, then.”  Mike took out a cigarette and lit it.  “You want one?”

            “Sure.”  Riker took the fag and drew in. 

            “They’re bad for you.”  Mike nodded towards the pickup turning into the parking lot.  “Contractor.  This one’s okay.  Won’t ask questions, pays what he says.  Name’s Doug.”

            “There might be better jobs.  Computers.”  Mike paused.  “Just a thought.”

            “I don’t mind working hard,” Riker said.  “Do me good.”

            “Doug’s all right, then.” 

            Riker nodded, then tossed his cigarette down and ground it. 

            Mike watched him walk away.  He spoke briefly with Doug, then jumped into the bed of the truck with four other guys.  Chaco stayed behind; too old.  He could lay brick, though, and someone, Mike thought, would come by for him.  He made sure the parking lot was picked up before he left.  Shifting into gear, Riker was still on his mind.  He turned back onto Pace, then turned again on Cervantes.  He had more stops, more parking lots, more guys to check on.  Riker faded away, but not before Mike had figured it out:  medical discharge.  Sometimes those discharges turned into dishonorable ones, if the diagnosis had been PTSD. 

            That was a thought Mike didn’t want to chase, and he turned the radio up, so he could sing along with the Beach Boys.

 

            On Tuesdays Mike met Chaco for supper at Sonic, a few blocks away from the church and a few streets down from the day labor place.  He and Chaco had fought in the same war, although in different years and in different ways.  Still, there were enough similarities – they way they both had volunteered, the way they both carried wounds from the war and from their homecoming.  Chaco’s dad had died while he’d been on a boat in the jungle, and he’d come home to a stepfather who viewed him as a rival and a baby sister he didn’t want to think about.  Mike had come home to a wife he barely knew, and then a daughter who learned not to love her daddy but to tiptoe around him.

            Both of them had wandered into this small city on the Gulf, familiar to them because of the bleached white uniform they’d worn and the dark grey ships they’d slept on.  Now Chaco lived in the woods with the other tent city men, and Mike had a studio – if that’s what you could call it – behind the church that he rented for fifty bucks a month plus all the small jobs Pastor John needed.

            It was still over ninety, even as the sun lowered itself towards the shimmer in the air that was the Gulf, but Sonic had tables and benches outside, decorated with plastic vases and plastic flowers.

            Chaco had the same order every time:  chicken tenders, Tater Tots, and a sweet tea.  Mike liked to change it up sometimes, but this afternoon was hot and sticky and the sky promised of weather on the way.  He ordered a chili cheese Coney and onion rings, with a large Coke, the plastic cup slippery with condensation.

            He worried about the weather.  Tornadoes usually bounced along above I-10, but sometimes they’d swoop in as water spouts and skip across the city like the flat stones his daughter used to find for him on the beach.  You could waterproof a tent, or a tarp and a sleeping bag, but wind would pick up lodgepole pines and toss them like javelins.

            “You worry too much,” Chaco said.  “It don’t change nothin’.”

            This was true, but Mike couldn’t seem to stop it.  His worries were like the trains that rattled across the midsection of this old city, shaking windows and shattering the night noises with their wails.

            “Something about that new guy,” Mike said.

            “They didn’t kick him off the job,” Chaco answered.  “Came back in the pickup same’s how he left.”

            “How new is he?” Mike spilled some of the chili on his shirt and smeared it with his napkin.

            Chaco shrugged, slurped his tea.  “Never seen him afore.”

            “Weather comin’ in.  Just wonderin’, do he got a place to kip.”

            Chaco chewed an ice cube.  “He didn’t stay,” he said, finally.  “Walked off by his own self, didn’t see him no more.”

            “You see him again.” Mike gathered up his trash, and Chaco’s, and dumped it in the can.  “Tell him to come to the shelter.”

            Chaco stood, then took a cigarette out of his pocket.  Mike fumbled for his lighter, and then lit one for himself.  “Can’t smoke here no more,” Chaco said.  “Gettin’ so’s a man can’t do nothin’.”

            Mike said nothing.  He took a drag, blew out a smoke ring, the kind that used to make Karen giggle.  “You want a ride?” he asked.

            Chaco eyed the horizon.  “Yeah, that’d be good.”

            “Won’t hurt your reputation to be seen in a church vee-hicle?” Mike pronounced the word as if he were from the woods.

            “Fuck off,” Chaco said amiably, slamming the door and rolling the window down.

            Mike grinned.  He pulled out of the parking lot, turning down past the pecan place and out onto Fairfield.  Chaco’s woods was down a spell, by the overpass.  Mike read in the paper that the county was going to clear it out for some new exit ramp. 

            Chaco said, “That boy too young to be in our war.”

            “He said Somalia.”

            “EOD?” Chaco tossed his butt out the window, rolled it up.  There was a splat of raindrops on the windshield, first one, then two, then four.  “Here she comes,” Chaco said.

            Mike turned on the wipers, peering through the rain-smeared windshield.  “You might could come to the shelter tonight too,” he offered.

            The windows steamed up, making visibility impossible.  So much of driving in the summer was based on chance, Mike thought.  He could just make out the light up ahead of him, and he tapped the breaks twice before stopping.  His tires were okay but the road was now a sheen of oil and pooling water.

            “I be okay,” Chaco said.

            “Maybe.” Mike flicked his indicator on, pulled over onto the verge, hoping not to get too near the rivulet that had been a dry ditch.  “Officer, surely.”

            “’F I see him, I tell him,” Chaco agreed.  “But that boy, he got too many demons for a church shelter.”

            “Nowhere dry tonight,” Mike said.

            “Little water never hurt nobody. That boy, he be needin’ a bath anyways.” Chaco opened the door and jumped down, somehow missing the ditch.  “No work tomorrow, rain all night.”

            “Yeah.”  Mike sighed.  “See ya.”

            Chaco slammed the door and vanished into the rain and the woods.

            Mike turned the defogger up full blast and pulled back out onto the road.  Most likely the fella would find an abandoned house somewhere, one not full of druggies, for tonight.  Linda Sue had called him a dog with a bone.  He shut that thought down and headed back to Pastor John and the church.


	2. 2. Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will Riker lands in the 21st century.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few Waffle Houses still offer the full menu.

           He dreamt he was falling.  He knew this was strange, because he never dreamt about falling.  His anxiety dreams came in the form of cold running water, of turning around a bend in a creek to see horror waiting before him in the ripple of current and fallen leaves.  But he was not falling into or away from something.  No, he was falling back through his own life, where the days flipped past like the paper comic you could make where the flipping made the pictures move.  He was falling past death, and explosions, and fire; then he was falling past the choices he’d made, the people he’d loved and left; and finally he was falling into the one place he never went and had worked so hard to forget: his childhood.

            Whether he’d willed himself into unconsciousness, or freefalling through zero gravity was the cause, he didn’t remember anything else until the brutal appearance of his landing.  He’d practiced the landing on the holodeck, with the safeties off, tucking and rolling, protecting his head, going from zero gravity to earth in a matter of seconds, but reality and the holodeck were two entirely different things.  He’d tucked and rolled, all right, but the holodeck didn’t have broken glass, or sharp-edged gravel, or brambles, or stagnant water; he managed to land into all of it at the same time.  The clothes he’d replicated were no protection for any of it, and he lay there, stunned into senselessness.

            He awoke the second time to a hot sun beating down on him and the realization that he hadn’t dreamt he was falling at all.  He tried to sit up, but his head hurt so bad he turned to the side and puked bile instead.  When was the last time he’d had something to drink?  He couldn’t remember.  He puked again, shutting his eyes against the heat and the pain.  His eyes still closed, he concentrated only on breathing.  His heart was pounding in the same rhythm as his head.  Pull yourself together, he thought, you’ve been in worse situations than this, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember where or when.  He slowed his breathing.  He flexed his fingers and then his hands.  Stabbing pain in his right shoulder, but he could move his arms despite the pain.  No broken bones then.  His legs worked, although his trousers were wet; he wasn’t sure with what.

            He must have passed out again.  This time when he awoke he was in shade and trembling with cold.  His trousers were plastered to his legs.  His head still hurt, but it was more a leftover aching.  Slowly, bracing himself with his one good arm, he sat up.  Seeing holograms of the 21st century was not the same as being in it:  stupefied, he watched as what Picard had once called automobiles passed by in an unrelenting column of movement.  Smells assailed him, stagnant water, something sickly sweet, exhaust, and a hint of salt in the air – the sea?

            “Cops will get you, you don’t move.”

            He stilled himself.  The voice was behind him, slow and golden, like the pancake syrup of his childhood.

            “You hear me?”

            There was a veiled threat behind the syrup.

            He coughed.  “I hear you.”

            “You be on my patch.”

            He surveyed the area.  The two lanes of road, the ditch, the overhang above which more automobiles – cars, he thought – passed, the lights that stopped the cars depending on its colors.  Behind him he could feel the coolness of trees.

            He said, still sitting, “I don’t know how I got here.”  He heard the man shift; he heard a flick and then there was the smell of smoke.

            “You hurt?”

            “Bruised, I think.  Nothing broken.  My shoulder.  I hit my head.”

            The man came from behind him.  He was short, thin, scraggly-looking, dirty.  “Someone done th’owed you out a car.”

            That, he thought, was as likely an explanation as any.  “Yeah.”

            “You got any money?”  The threat was back.  “Them real nice boots you got.”

            “I don’t know.  I can’t remember much.”  He didn’t know if he stood, if this man – who looked weak but probably wasn’t – would take his height as a threat.

            The man tilted his head to a cardboard sign, by the edge of the road.  “This where I be.”

            “I’m sorry.”  He’d have to stand and take his chances.  Even though the man was much smaller, he was sure he was in no shape to fight, not with a dislocated shoulder and a possible concussion.  Leaning forward, so that he was using his left arm to brace himself, he stood, then doubled over as pain and nausea hit again.

            “You one helluva sorry drunk, boy,” the man said. 

            It would have been funny had he not been in such a precarious position.  There was someone, a woman, he thought, whose laughter he could suddenly hear.  The nausea faded and he stood up, a good six inches now between himself and the other man.  The man had asked him about money.  He’d learned as much as he could, he thought, and he felt in his trousers pockets, keenly aware of the man sizing him up.  Most of his money he’d hidden against his skin, but he’d read that men wore wallets in their pockets which kept money and their identification cards.

            “I have some,” he said, “I guess I wasn’t robbed.”

            The man seemed to come to a decision.  “Then you can buy me dinner,” and he nodded towards a brightly-lit place across the road.  “Since I done lost money dealing with you.”

            This apparent truce offering brought its own problems.  He had money, he was sure he did.  But he couldn’t remember if he knew how to use it.  He was sore and he was exhausted, and he was wet and cold.  He wasn’t certain he could pass. 

 

           

             The man darted through the cars and he followed, grateful that some of the training he’d done in his life had counted for something.  Into the diffused light of the restaurant, through the glass double doors, he heard a man say, “Welcome to Waffle House,” before he was physically assailed by the smells – oil and (meat?) and butter and onions.  Coffee.  Something else, too, something from childhood.  He shook his head to drive the thoughts away. 

            “Bubba, you know you can’t be in here without you got cash,” a young woman said.

            She’d said “thowt” and “cain’t” and he struggled to understand her.

            The man, Bubba, said, “He buyin’.  Coffee, nice an’ hot.”

            The young woman looked him up and down with a wisdom he found both sad and familiar.  “You don’t look like you got cash, mister.”

            If he opened, he thought, his educated, Standard-speaking mouth, he would not survive.  Though he didn’t want to go there, he did:  maybe he couldn’t sound like the golden syrup of Bubba and this young woman, but he could certainly sound like a cheechako from the parklands.

            He shrugged, slid into the booth.  “Coffee,” he said.  “Sweet.”  He glanced at the setup.  “Make a new pot.  Please.”

            “Comin’ right up.”  Her nametag read Bree.

            He was silent, anxiety drumming in the fingers of his left hand, a syncopated beat.

            “You play?”  The man grabbed the cup from Bree, almost as if he thought she’d snatch it away.

            He didn’t understand.  Then he realized he was beating out Cole Porter.  “Yeah, some.” He waited for her to set the mug on the table, along with little cups in a saucer and a container of packets.  “Thanks.”  He had no idea what to do next.  How could he have thought he could ever do this?

            “My name ain’t Bubba.” 

            He watched not-Bubba tear open the little cups to pour cream and sugar in the coffee.  Grateful, he did the same.  He inhaled the aroma and then sipped, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to watch the man who wasn’t Bubba slurp and spill.

            “You ready to order?”

            He glanced at the plastic menu on the table.  The prices were confusing.  He was sitting on his wallet and he pulled it out.  Opening it up he remembered that he’d added everything he thought he would need, identification and cash.  He made a quick calculation and was sure he had enough for whatever not-Bubba would order.

            “Steak and eggs, scrambled,” not-Bubba said.  “Hash browns, scattered, covered.  Bacon and sausage.  White toast.”

            “And you?” Bree watched him.  He calculated the cost, avoiding her brown eyes.  Real eggs.  “I’d like the fiesta omelet, three eggs, wheat toast.”  He was hungry.  “And a waffle.”

            “No hash browns or grits?”

            He had no idea what grits were.  “No.  Thanks.” 

            “You want water or juice? Bubba?”

            “Orange juice,” not-Bubba said.  “And more coffee.”

            “Water. Please.”

            “Comin’ right up.”  She left them.

            He couldn’t call the guy not-Bubba through a meal.  “I’m Will,” he said, offering his hand.

            “I ain’t Bubba.”  It wasn’t that the guy didn’t actively refused to shake.

            “You said that already.”

            “You got money for this?”

            Will nodded.  His head ached, the pain traveling down his neck to his shoulder, where it increased.  He heard the young woman calling out the order, more words he had no translation for.  She refilled their coffee, and set down the juice and water.  The juice looked good, and the water tasted terrible.

            It was painful to speak.  “I’d like juice,” he said.  “Do you have anything other than orange?”

            “Apple, tomato, grapefruit.”

            “I’ll have the grapefruit.”  He put more cream and sugar in his coffee.  He didn’t like sugar in coffee but it was painfully obvious he needed the sugar.

            “You ain’t from here.”

            “No.” He suppressed a grin.  An understatement, that.

            The food came in a flurry of plates and maple syrup for his waffle.  They ate silently, Will trying hard not to watch, with a sort of dread fascination, the other man eat his food.  Bree came once more to refill coffees and to take his waffle plate away.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a waffle, but then, he couldn’t seem to remember much right now anyway.

For example, he couldn’t remember if this was where he was supposed to be.  And if it were, he couldn’t remember why.

            “It’s Roy.”

            “Roy.”  He couldn’t decide whether he felt better, or whether he felt nauseated.

            “Was my daddy’s name.”

            “You finished?” There was an urgency now, a feeling he had someplace to be, something to do.  He stood up, but it was too fast and the world spun.

            “You okay, mister?”

            “Yeah.”

            “You need the restroom?”  Concern laced the young woman’s voice.

            “It behind you,” Roy said.

            He shrugged himself out of the booth.  There was a small hallway towards the back, and he made his way slowly there, opening the door that read “Men.”  More oddities but he didn’t care.  He stumbled to the toilet.  He remembered there was no velseam, and unzipped, the pressure relieved in his bladder and the nausea vanished.  His kidneys ached.  He washed his hands and splashed water on his face.  Then he wet his hand and raked his fingers through his hair.  He checked the money in his wallet again.  He could pay for the food, then find someplace to sleep.

            Roy stood by the door, waiting.  He picked up the slip of paper off the table. 

            “I’ll take that,” Bree said, from farther down the counter.

            He gave it to her.

            “Twenty-five ninety-three.”

            He counted the money out, one twenty and a ten.  She handed him the change back, and he left it on the counter for her.  Outside it was dark, the yellow lights from inside pooling on the ground.  He knew, even before he heard the snick of the knife opening, that he was in trouble.  Another time, another place, he could have easily handled Roy.  Now he hesitated a moment too long and felt the knife prick his skin.

            “We walk across the street to my spot, real friendly-like.”

            He nodded.  It was a mistake, to leave the restaurant, but the knife point was sharp and the damage would be done by the time he called for help.  They walked awkwardly, Roy behind him and to the side.  “We gone cross the road.  You try anything, you dead.”  The way Roy said it, flat, matter-of-fact.  It wasn’t the same voice but it was the same tone.  His head ached, his ribs ached.  He could just let it happen.  Maybe that’s why he was here.

           

 


End file.
